Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining

Weekly Summary #4

I wish I could say that my confidence boost from last week survived this week’s video assignments… but it didn’t. When this week’s agenda was sent out I was thinking to myself, hey, this can’t be that bad! Little did I know, it was going to be a pain. Although the assignment load was lighter this week the assignments themselves were slightly harder.

Part 1: Fun

My week began with background information. I started with Roger Elbert’s movie techniques. I learned a lot of material that later became very valuable in my other video assignments. Elbert taught me different movie angles, which angles are preferred, what mood each angle gives off, etc. Adding to this new knowledge, I learned interesting facts on famous directors. An example of this is Tarantino’s from below shot! After learning all this new information it was time for me to apply it to a movie clip. I reviewed a specific movie analyzing its camera and audio work. The movie I chose was the Matrix. This assignment was difficult at first, but nonetheless it was still enjoyable.

Part 2: Satisfactory

We have reached the satisfactory part of my week, the ordinary part. This week’s daily creates involved customizing your own map, customizing your own famous artwork, cloning yourself, and sharing your inner nervousness! Most of the daily assignments this week involved a lot of experimenting. My favorite one by far was the map customization simply because I got to experiment with a different website. My least favorite daily assignment was sharing your inner nervousness. I wasn’t totally crazy about it because I didn’t know what to post.

This week’s interactions went better than last week’s. I feel like with each week it gets easier and easier to comment on other people’s blogs. I had several comments that were posted on my blog throughout the week. Reading and commenting on other people’s blogs assisted me with this week’s assignments because I got to see how they went about them. To view this week’s comments click here.

Part 3: Downhill

This portion of my week had me thinking why can’t we simply revert back to our old ways and use PowerPoint. Video assignments, a blessing and a curse. Blessings: cool we get to create our own videos, yay! we only have to do two assignments. Curse: the software. I knew that the program was going to be a challenge ever since I read this week’s agenda. However, when I saw that Windows Movie Maker was recommended I knew I was going to be just fine because I’ve used it in the past. Boy, was I wrong!

This week I completed two video assignments. My first one, Art Attack was quite the challenge. I essentially had to redo the project twice because I only had the trial version on my computer and I couldn’t save it as any other file, which meant I couldn’t upload my video to YouTube. After attempting to salvage my first video I decided to use my sister’s computer. It finally worked! My second assignment of the week also was a challenge, but for a different reason. For The Wanderlust Traveler assignment I continued to use my sister;s computer. The only problem was the screenshot button wasn’t working, so I had to take pictures of my procedure with my phone.

Although this week was tough, I learned several valuable things. I hope that I will be able to regain my confidence that I had last week for next week’s video assignments. After all, this week was just a trial run! And even after some of my/the class’s struggles this week I think it’s important that we all remind ourselves of one thing…We are Beyonce Always